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Voting over the blockchain enables various entry levels of security, governance and trusted campaigns.

As one of the core function of the NXT Blockchain, voting provides a valuable service that can be implemented for political voting campaigns, for example the up-and-coming Brexit referendum of 23rd June 2016. Any Voting can be applied but we will use the UK as Example.

There are 418 principal (unitary, upper and second tier) councils in the UK

27 county councils

201 district councils

125 unitary councils

Looking at just the 217 upper tier councils (which excludes district), there are 152 in England, 32 in Scotland, 22 in Wales and 11 in Northern Ireland.

What hurdles must be overcome for Blockchain voting? Councils in the UK operate the voters roll in which you pre-register to vote (This is also used as part of your Credit rating ”Digital Identity”). We would need to bridge the council's voters roll database to the blockchain, and provide a matching NXT ID. We are faced with the risk of multiple votes from GHOST Voters, along with the larger issue of how the voter registers his or her VOTE. In the NXT schema you would have to download the NXT Client in order to participate. However, there are the technical issues of throughput (Votes per second) and jurisdictional control.

Permission based Nodes, as presented by DT-Chain, will resolve various issues and can complement NXT Decentralized Voting.

There are 418 Principal councils and this would mean each one would have a DT-Chain Masternode, which would mean they have access to the global and their own private voting chain. They would be able to replicate their existing Databases onto their private, permissioned blockchain and therefore retain control and privacy of the data.

DT-Chain can handle hundreds of thousands of votes per second, while operating in conjunction with the NXT Voting Mechanism. This allows a hybrid solution to maintain the integrity of public decentralization while enforcing jurisdictional control.

Additionally, to eradicate the fraudulent or Ghost votes via APP or PC voting, the Voter would submit their Identity such Passport, NHS or National insurance or all at the same time. This is to be supplemented by photo that is taken upon the time of the vote, possibly supplemented by biometric technology.

A very elegant and user friendly Voting portal or app can be connected to the DT-Chain for voting. The votes can be issued in parallel on the DT-Chain, and they can then be cross-logged to the NXT Blockchain with a time stamp. DT-Chain does the heavy lifting in terms of the throughput, secures privacy and jurisdictional control, and passes the needed information through to NXT Decentralized Voting for public reporting and transparency.

This can also be taken much deeper, with Sub-Nodes from the councils offering services to 9-10,000 local councils in England, including towns, parishes, communities, neighbourhoods and village councils. Scotland and Wales have a similar system of community councils that sit below the principal councils.

This all falls elegantly into line with the issues of Digital identity, Housing, Benefits and many more public services outside of Voting that can be managed on the DT-Chain Nodes supplemented by NXT Core functions such as Voting, Messaging, and Monetary system..

For the councils this would also enable cost cuts on administration, with efficiency gains allowing for re-allocation of resources to other areas. The greatest benefit is in securing the identity and privacy of the person voting, or requiring services from the administration. This identity can be constantly updated across different networks, and be instrumental in preventing Identity fraud.